DBL104: Aquarelle - Leave Corners

Digital Release: September 29th, 2017 LP Release: October 20th

About Leave Corners

An album many years in the making, Leave Corners is the 4th full length LP from Ryan Potts’ Aquarelle project. The album finds Potts developing his sound largely without the use of his standby instrument of the guitar, instead focusing on his interest in other stringed instruments and their interactions with feedback and distortion. Because of this new focus on sine waves, strings and feedback, the album opens with “Open Absence pt. 1” which serves as an overture of sorts. A peek into the new focus for the project. Then, almost as a nod to his past, the album bursts forth with the most “classic” Aquarelle track of the album “Open Absence pt. 2”. With its layered guitar and half buried crackling and rattling percussion it is almost the apotheosis of the styles from his previous stunner Sung in Broken Symmetry. The rest of the album expands the palettet mightily, diving into saturated walls of subtly oscillating tones (“Cut Stone”), cyclical chimes and cello phrases (“Brass Logic”), and the haunting smoky strings of the closer “The Horse Has Run”.

The album artwork for Leave Corners, created by Hannah Devereux, features fine, intricate lines that collide in subtle fashion which Ryan felt resonated heavily with his own vision of the album.

A personal note from Samuel Melancon, head of Debacle Records.

This album is a very exciting one on a personal level as I had been a deep fan of Ryan Potts for many years. His albums on Students of Decay were huge inspirations on myself and the development of Debacle Records. All that took a leap into “ALL TIMER” levels in 2015 when my son Calvin was born. My wife and I were playing around with white noise generators as a sleep aide when I finally said “You know I have more interesting versions of this…” and so we started trying out different droney, zoney and beautiful albums in the collection. Calvin demonstrably responded to a few artists, with Aquarelle sticking out in particular. Sung in Broken Symmetry’s opener “With Verticals” quickly become known as “magic song” around our house, for its ability to calm even the worst bedtimes. We deployed it daily for a period of 8-12 months. Imagine my joy when Ryan got in touch out of the blue about the possibility of partnering on his next album! A year later we are so excited to present Leave Corners to you.

Calvin is now two-and-half years old and my wife and I still regularly go about our evenings with “With Verticals” (or as Calvin says “Yellow Sleepy Song”) wavering ghostly from a tablet to a tiny speaker in the baby monitor.